Educational Affiliation
Reading is essential in the acquisition of knowledge. Books are the source of power and many great leaders including Alexander the Great had been fond of reading during his lifetime. Dr. Seuss, a famous writer of children’s story books, once said in one of his books published in 1978 entitled, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut that:
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you will go” (as cited from Dickinson et al. 2012).
Going back to its neurological background, Love and Webb (1986) claimed that learning speech and language development is tied with the child’s physical development (217). Meaning, the physical development takes place in the brain. In neurology, brain growth is essential for the other brain parts to grow such as the brainstem, pons, midbrain and medulla. Scientifically, Love and Webb also argues that the growth of the brain cortex located in the cerebral hemispheres is a vital process to acquire language and to learn how to speak; basically, it is because of the various neural structures for communication are commonly found on this part of the brain (218). The myelin sheath of the neuron performs the process called myelination, a cyclic process in which some parts of the brain start the process of thinking early whilst the other parts of the neural functions develop later.
“Myelination has been considered one of the more significant indices of brain maturation and often a prime correlate of speech and language” (Love and Webb 1986; p. 220).
Neurology offers explanation about this relationship is because of the neural information exchange. Rapid transmission of neural information via impulses are sent along the thin, neural fibers which are then connected to each other forming a network. Electrical impulses of carried information are processed by the brain, particularly the cerebral nervous system. The cerebral nervous system highly depends on its axon connectors between brain hemispheres, lobes, cortical and sub-cortical brain structures. Furthermore, the importance of myelination in language acquisition explains that lack of myelin maturity amongst language associated fibers and centers in the human brain are suggested to be the leading cause of the language delay on some people.
On the psychological perspective, the brain is the main organ responsible for remembering spoken words; unconsciously, children learn the language through the input process. Similar to a computer, the brain acts like a computer storing all the information gathered outside. The mother or the story teller is the one who is responsible for the ‘data feeding’ into the child’s mind. Skinner reiterated that the language is the product of the reinforcing information and the environment. This view is primary based on Behaviorist Theory which explains that a behavior is made through stimuli-response process; mainly the stimuli comes from the outside and is conditioned to create a behavior. For example, in one scenario, a mother reads story books to her baby in order for the latter to learn the process of speaking. In Skinner’s perspective, the mother is the external stimuli that ‘conditions’ her baby through reading the book word for word to develop her baby’s tongue and vocabulary. The baby is the experimental set-up, meaning he is widely open to all other external stimuli that can trigger his ability to speak. As cited from Casasola and Kopko (n.d.), a research was conducted to learn the how the infants’ learn the language. In the experiment conducted by Casasola and Baghwat (n.d.), they studied the effects of conditioning to 18-month-old babies and their process of learning the language.
“Infants were shown 4 different videos of a support relation (two objects placed together): a car placed on top of another car, a cup placed on an inverted bowl, a Duplo figure placed on a Duplo car, and a turtle placed on a pole. One group of infants heard a novel word to describe the objects occupying the space as they viewed these events: “Wow! She puts it toke.” A second group of infants received the same novel word as a count noun (“Wow! It is a toke.”) A third group simply viewed the events in silence to establish how infants attend to the support relation when not hearing any language” (Casasola and Kopko, n.d; p. 2).
The resulting data from the above experiment proved that infants do learn the spoken language as instructed.
“Results showed that infants who heard the novel spatial word looked significantly longer at the novel relation than the familiar spatial relation indicating that the infants learned to recognize the support relation as familiar relative to the containment relation. In contrast, infants who viewed the events in silence and most infants who heard the novel word as a count noun did not. The results demonstrate that providing a label to an event helps infants learn about what they see. Providing a spatial word, even an unfamiliar one, can aid 18-month-old infants in recognizing a support relation as familiar” (Casasola and Kopko, n.d; p. 2).
Moving forward, High Reach Training Module (2005) published their teaching manual containing relevant information about early childhood education. According to their statement, reading books to infants and toddlers are the most effective way of making them familiar with the language sounds and the books. Through reading, their developing brains can perceive the correct pronunciation of various words, enhance their vocabulary and getting acquainted in the literary world. Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001 also justified that in order to establish the foundation for stronger literary skills, parents must share their books and other reading materials to their babies (as cited from High Reach Learning, 2005; p. 1). Other claims made by McLane & McNamee, 1991 that by making the infants and toddlers to get familiarize with the language, whenever they see adults reading a book, their young minds will get hyped and interested as to what the adults have been reading. Occasionally, babies learn how to turn the pages and eventually gain a simple understanding that the letters written in the books have meanings and readings (1). Occasionally, babies have strong speech capabilities because of their developing brain, Due to the constant input of the belief that ‘reading is fun’, they mimic the words and phrases said aloud in front of them similar in the manner of parrots. Little by little, these simple words will eventually turn into sentences as they become more exposed in the speaking environment. Indeed, Rice, Burkes, & Kaplan-Sanoff (n.d.) agrees that teaching toddlers and infants the process of interpersonal communication, parents are on the right track of investing in their children’s future (as cited from High Reach Learning, 2005; p. 2).
Going back to Skinner, he declared that a baby can learn the basics of the language through operant conditioning. Reinforcement through reading a book in front of children and babies will develop their abilities to speak and learn the tonal variations of different words; hence, as Skinner had said, language is an acquired trait which is the result of the influence of the environment (Levine and Munsch, 2010; p. 301). Another psychological explanation pertains to the social cognitive theory. The social cognitive theory analyzes more the face-to-face interaction between a mother and her infant as an effective way of learning the language. As the mother talk or read books to their babies, she serves as a role model in using the language to communicate, and the infant wants to imitate her mother to continue the fun. Moreover, as cited from Levine and Munsch (2010), Noam Chomsky (1968) proposed the nativism theory that explains the wonders of the human brain. In young children and infants, their brain although not yet fully developed are directly wired to process external information. These external information are fed by parents and the society to their young minds. Chomsky suggested that babies cannot learn the complex process of speech faster; however, if there are sets communication structures present in their brains, learning a language will be easier for them even before they can actually hear the language itself. Various explanations made by speech pathologists regarding this phenomena. Love and Webb (1986) argued that the beginning of language development requires the ability to mix neural information from the auditory, somesthetic and visual association areas of the brain. The temporal auditory association areas, occipital-visual association areas and the parietal association area must combine or work together to provide the neural bases of language development (219). The rapid growth of vocabulary in children happens in the second and third years of life; hence, the sign of myelination, in other words, maturity of the brain functions.
Dickinson et al. (2012) added that children needs to be exposed to hear many words as possible to develop their ability to communicate as well as to enhance vocabulary. Other researches performed by Hart and Risley (1995) explained that children who have less educated parents only knows small vocabularies compared to those children whose parents are fully educated. The power of book reading in babies not only helps them to learn proper syntax and grammatical rules; reading books to toddlers and babies helps in getting their attention through the colorful designs of the book and diverts their attention away from other things. Another final influence, book educates the children in learning the appropriate word meanings, Authors write in different and varied styles and some of their personality are incorporated within the book’s texts. Idioms and other hard words from the English language can be learned easily just by analyzing the sentences written in each pages (Crosser 2004).
As a conclusion, a book is a precious stone that a man could have. The book houses the emotions, principles and views of the author about the society, people or objects. The rich information found in the book must be re-read to toddlers and infants in a more friendly to make them familiarize in a language.
References
Casasola, M., & Kopko, K. (n.d.). Research Sheds Light on How Babies Learn and Develop Language. New York: Department of Human Development, Cornell University.
Dickinson, D., Griffith, J., Golinkoff, R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2012). How reading books fosters language development around the world. Child Development Research, 2012.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children (1st ed.). Baltimore: P.H. Brookes.
High Reach Learning,. (2005). Training Module: Reading to Infants and Toddlers. Charlotte, North Carolina: High Reach Learning Inc.
Levine, L., & Munsch, J. (2010). Child Development: An Active Learning Approach (2nd ed., p. 301). London: Sage.
Love, R., & Webb, W. (1986). Neurology for the Speech Language Pathologist (1st ed.). Stoneham, Massachussetts: Butterworth Publishers.
McLane, J., & McNamee, G. (1991). The Beginnings of Literacy: Edited from Zero to Three Journal. (1st ed.).
Whitehurst, G., & Lonigan, C. (2001). : Pre-talkers: Birth to 2 years of age. The Early Literacy Initiative.(1st ed., p. 3). Charlotte, North Carolina: High Reach Learning Inc. Retrieved from http:// www.pla.org/projects/ preschool/emerginglit.pdf
Appendix
1. What were the databases used to find each article?
-In order to obtain a credible information, I searched website using the Google Scholar Search engine to locate dissertations, journals and books.
2. What was the search strategy which was used, i.e., the search words used in each database to find the articles?
-During the research process, I used short words with a relevant meaning. For example, on my topic about ‘Reading to a child every day (even an infant) is beneficial for language development’, I maximized the Google search engine by looking at the results displayed on the search bar. Instead of searching for the whole thesis statement, what I did was to type, ‘Effects of reading to children’.
3. Did each article cited an example of Primary or Secondary research?
-Half of my citations came from secondary researches whilst half of it came from my own. The scarcity of finding a reliable website to obtain a proper citation makes it difficult to search online because the paper will lose its credibility if it’s not from scholarly articles. Hence, I also had to rely on their findings. What I did is I read their papers and tried to obtain the gist of the information and paraphrase it before citing to the paper to avoid plagiarism also to add my own understanding about what they have written.
